


tender is the night

by dollylux



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Body Worship, Emotional Porn, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, Falling In Love, First Time, M/M, Protective Magnus, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 12:42:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20930411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/pseuds/dollylux
Summary: Taako stares at him, blank and unimpressed. Magnus resists the urge to fidget.“It’s just…” He runs a hand through the thick bramble of his hair, gripping the crown of it to anchor himself. He sighs, slumping back against the footboard. “I guess I’m just not very good at one on one. Like, not… not in any way.”Taako’s eyebrows raise up close to his sleep mask.“And you came tome? What do you think I am, Miss Congeniality?”“I’m too rough,” Magnus forces out, lifting his head to meet Taako’s eyes. “I grew up with a bunch of boy cousins, you know? We punched each other to show affection. I just never learned to, like.”He shrugs and tries for a smile.“To handle anything worth having, I guess.”





	tender is the night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [my damn self](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=my+damn+self).

> I started writing this in January, then it grew into an epic poem of Taako worship. Life decided to give me cancer, and therefore surgery, and this went on the backburner. But tonight I said fuck it, it's time to finish it. So please forgive the rambling prose about how exquisite Taako is, or how big and hung Magnus is, or how inevitable their love is. And please enjoy.♥

In his defense, he has much fewer years on him than everyone else, with the exception of Barry, a man who was probably born cautious. Magnus’s mama had told him that when he was born, he hit the ground running and never stopped.

He has energy to spare and a ceaseless desire to expend it. He’s like a golden retriever.

“A puppy,” Taako adds, when Magnus mentions this to him. They’re sitting in the grass after the required morning run, Magnus with his shirt off and his face tipped towards the bright morning sun and Taako beside him but in the safety and shade of a young tree, his thin tank top soaked through, hair falling out of its braid and sticking to his flushed face in long, honeyed strands.

They’re both squinting off in the distance where Lup and Merle are still jogging, probably the most visually hilarious duo on any plane.

“Not a puppy,” Magnus finally replies when he gets around to it, passing his icy cold water container to Taako with the lid already off. “I’m twenty-two, dude. That’s definitely entering into full grown dog status.”

He doesn’t expect to find Taako’s eyes on him when he looks over, and so the sudden presence of all that attention focused solely on him makes him antsy. He shifts on the grass, sliding easily with the morning dew and stretching his legs out in front of him, the overworked muscles in his calves jumping.

“You can’t even sit still,” Taako observes with a smile before tipping the bottle and filling his mouth with water that fattens his cheeks before he swallows it down. “I bet I could offer you a fuckin’ steak dinner if you’d sit still for ten minutes, and you’d lose in the first five.”

Magnus sits up a little straighter at the first hint of a challenge, and he turns to face Taako and meet his gaze head-on. 

“Bet I could,” he replies.

“Could what? Lose? Oh, for sure. No argument here.” Taako grins and hands the container back, pleased at having outwitted Magnus so easily. Magnus holds in a smirk as he watches Taako glide gracefully to his feet, shirt getting caught in the waist of his absurdly tiny running shorts. 

He looks content as a cat as he smooths out his hair and rights his clothes, and he’s completely not expecting it when Magnus wraps his arms around Taako’s long bare legs, yanking hard enough to knock him off his feet but catching him before his back hits the grass. He lets go of him a few inches above the ground, a little too gleeful at the thud that follows and the yowl of irritation that leaves Taako. 

Magnus gets to his feet and caps his water container, the sun at his back as he grins down at Taako in his shadow.

“You got quiet,” he remarks, sidestepping Taako’s flailing legs and narrowly avoiding getting kicked by him. 

“Having the air knocked out of you will do that, I guess!” Much less elegant this time around. A lot more glaring. Taako pushes the messy braid of his hair off his shoulder and stands up as tall as he can, though he’s still at least half a foot shorter than Magnus. He looks indignant and a little embarrassed, his long ears flattened back against his head, arms crossed over his narrow chest.

If they were dating, this would be the part where Magnus pulls him closer and says sweet things until Taako gives in.

He bypasses the thought quickly and reaches out to pinch Taako’s side, being as gentle as he can but still managing to earn a squeak and a slap on the back from him. He jogs away laughing, not moving nearly as fast as he really can just so that Taako can mostly keep up with him on the way back to the ship.

“Gross!” Lup yells cheerfully at them as they dart past.

\--

“You gonna eat that?”

Magnus gestures to Merle’s plate with his fork, eyes on the garlicky root vegetable that Taako has turned into a religious experience during this cycle. Merle’s still got a good portion left and he’s already cleaning his teeth with a wooden toothpick and arguing about naming the bond engine with Davenport, and his precious food is going to waste.

Merle glances at him, glances at his plate, and frowns.

“Yes,” he says, lifting up out of his seat enough to wrap his arms around the plate and hug it to himself protectively. “Savin’ it.”

“Oh,” Magnus replies, his face falling. He stands up with his scraped clean plate and heads for the kitchen, trying to convince himself that it’s totally okay that he’s not getting any more rad spud (the name Lup and Taako had decided on for the veggie in question) and that Merle is a greedy bastard. He nearly collides with Taako as soon as he steps into the kitchen, and Magnus has to reach out and steady him to keep him from falling.

“Fuck’s sake!” Taako squeaks, wielding a damp towel like a machete and trying to strike at Magnus only to have it flop uselessly against his arm. “How did you manage to be in stealth mode?”

“I’m… I’m not… I didn’t--” Magnus stops, huffs helplessly. He doesn’t react as Taako slips from his grasp and snatches the plate from his hand, but he looks to Lup who is cutting up onions for tomorrow’s breakfast and finds her eyes straight down, over-focused on her work. She’s smirking.

“Did you overhear any of that?” Lup asks Magnus, dicing the onions into tiny cubes with magically dry eyes. He marvels that she’s used a spell slot for such a thing and takes a beat to process her question.

“Any of what?” he says.

Lup and Taako exchange a look, Taako’s a bit more withering than Lup’s endless amusement.

“Nothing,” they singsong together. 

“Oh… kay,” Magnus says, looking between them with a deep frown before he turns to leave, to find somewhere a little less incomprehensible to be while his food digests. 

“Get back in here and help your boy,” Lup calls, stopping him in his tracks about three feet into his escape. Magnus returns, eyebrows raised incredulously.

“My…”

Lup tosses him a clean towel with exquisite precision, and he catches it against his chest and unfolds it as she pushes him toward the sink.

“Dishes. Dry.”

Magnus grew up a mama’s boy. He never had to do any chores and he got away with murder, but he knew to be obedient when a woman told him to do something. He grabs up a massive stew pot from the drainboard and starts to dry it, putting all his effort and focus into making it the driest pot who never lived.

“I don’t know where any of this stuff goes,” he protests, holding up the clean pot like it’s alive and angry. Lup’s mouth seems to be a permanent smirk. She fishes a plate out of the soapy water and nods over at Taako.

“Ask him.”

Taako is perched on the island, still wearing his apron that’s speckled with food and water stains, his hair in disarray, his face tired but amused. He points to a set of cabinets near the stove, never once looking away from Magnus.

“The right side. Put the smaller one inside of it first.”

Magnus does as he’s told and they fall into an easy rhythm, Lup washing, Magnus drying, and Taako directing. They’re on silverware when someone speaks up again, and of course it’s Lup.

“I dunno, little bro. He doesn’t seem like a wrecking ball to me. He didn’t break a single dish this whole time.” She has a towel tied around her waist and has been humming and dancing through their work the whole time. She lets the water out of the sink and starts to scrub down the counters. Magnus turns to Taako, his mouth open, betrayed.

“What do you mean, wrecking ball? I’m not a wrecking ball! I’m… I’m.” He pauses, thumb working the towel into the dip of a spoon while he thinks. “I’m a good helper.”

Lup and Taako snort and snicker at that, Taako with his long legs kicking against the side of the island, his head cocked to one side.

“I mean, you follow direction, I’ll give you that,” Taako replies, his eyes flashing teal with mirth. “But you’re defo a little rough around the edges, Mags. I mean, I have two bruises from you today alone.”

Magnus drops the spoon into the drawer with a loud clatter. He spins around to face Taako.

“I’ve _bruised_ you? What do you mean I---” He slings the towel up onto his shoulder and hurries towards Taako. “Where? Where’d I hurt you?”

“They don’t _hurt_.” Taako waves a dismissive hand at him but doesn’t try to move away. “Don’t worry about it.”

“He does bruise easy,” Lup adds helpfully from behind him.

“Magnus, can you come help Barry with this monitor?” Lucretia calls from the main room of the ship. Magnus holds in a sigh very valiantly and lifts his head to tell Lucretia he’ll be right there. Taako watches him from the foot or so between them, his eyes half mast and trained on Magnus. It’s strangely intense meeting his gaze, heat settling low in Magnus’s stomach as he tears his eyes away and leaves the kitchen, towel still on his shoulder, his cheeks warm with whatever that was. 

\--

Two a.m. is an unforgiving hour, and it’s never been kind to Magnus.

Maybe it’s ridiculous to be worried about hurting Taako, a creature many years older than him who has access to a cleric with healing spells and who got into the IPRE because he’s a very capable being. A couple of unintentional bruises from a heavy-handed coworker were probably at the bottom of the list of topics for his daily diary entry.

But still.

He hadn’t meant to. Hadn’t known he was even close to bruising him. And worse: he hadn’t even thought about it. Used to be, he didn’t know his strength, and he’d do a lot more damage than he intended, whether it was opening a stuck lid on a honey jar or trying to get a knot out of a shoelace. He broke shit. He tore it. Shattered it, crushed it, ruined it. It was charming when he was little, maybe. Now, though. 

Now he had hurt Taako.

He’s knocked on Taako’s cabin door without even realizing it, the memory of cold metal on his knuckles the only clue that he’s done so. It’s quiet on the other side, as one would expect of a normal person this time of night. He’s about to walk away when he hears the lock being turned and the door opens a few inches, one of Taako’s large eyes appearing in the crack. He sighs when he sees that it’s Magnus, and that eye falls closed as he tips his head forward and rests it against the edge of the door.

“Lost?” Taako mumbles.

“I’m supposed to protect you,” Magnus says, surprising himself with the honesty of it. He tries to swallow around the hard knot in his throat. The door opens a bit more and Taako’s eyes are open too, both of them visible now as he frowns at Magnus.

“Protect me? From what? Moths? Those weird night slugs this place has?” He shudders at the reminder of them, arms wrapping low around his waist. He’s wearing a standard issue IPRE shirt cut up into a crop top, his pajama pants clinging to his hips and rolled up there a couple of times to keep them from falling off. His hair is twisted up into an unquantifiable bun, and his skin is shiny with some nighttime moisturizer. 

And it’s in the tantalizing space between shirt and pants, the wide strip of stomach bared, that Magnus sees one of the bruises.

It’s just above his left hipbone, a thumb sized strip where Magnus had pinched him this morning, after their run. It had been playful, such a brief touch, but here was the evidence of his rough handling, of his lack of understanding of his own strength. 

He reaches out to touch the bruise without realizing it, and it’s only when he’s standing in Taako’s room and Taako is a few feet away that his mind catches up to his instincts. Taako is all but scowling at him now.

“Dude,” he says, arms folded tightly over his chest. “Use your words.”

“I… I hurt you.” He motions at the bruise, the thick sound of his swallowing filling the quiet space between them. “That’s… that’s what you were talking about. Earlier.”

“Ohmygod, so what? Are you kidding? With all the shit we’ve been through and have to do? A bruise from you flirting with me too hard is nothing. I cut my finger this morning slicing limes.”

He lifts his thumb and shows Magnus proof.

“I’ve been practicing archery, and my shoulder is fucked. This whole fucking planet gives me a chronic migraine because allergies. And sniffles.”

He sniffs delicately, another piece of evidence.

Magnus’s gut twists up into something much more pained than it had been before, and he feels it all over, a harsh wave of empathy that settles in his throat and his wrists and his belly.

“I don’t like it. Any of it,” he says quietly.

“Me either, but that’s life, my guy.” A bony shoulder lifts in a shrug. “No hard feelings. Promise. I was just teasing you earlier.”

Magnus accepts this in silence, nodding and looking down at his hands, empty and calloused and useless. Blunt instruments with no refinement, no reverence. That’s fine for the job, for most of the things he needs to do out here in this strange life they lead, but not for everything.

“Will you show me?” he asks. He sees Taako’s head tilt to the side in a silent question at the edge of his vision. “How to… how to be gentle? When I need to be?”

Taako eyes him with a distrust that Magnus feels he’s already worked past, a wariness on his shadowed, beautiful face that says more about Taako’s haunts than about Magnus. He watches Taako evenly, giving him as much time as he needs to work through whatever is going through his labyrinthine brain.

Nearly a full minute passes. And then,

“Alright.”

Taako steps back and to the side, letting Magnus into the room and closing the door behind him, the lock sliding into place with a snick. All their rooms are essentially identical, but the years spent on the Starblaster have given them plenty of time to customize them, to fill them with trinkets and saved oddities and mementos, all with stories, all designed to make the space feel like home.

Taako’s many pillows are stitched with bright thread, irregular, flowery borders adding personality to boring white sheets purchased by the IPRE. One pillow stands out from all the rest, a round one about the size of Magnus’s head, the fabric grandmotherly and tacky, but the words “PILLOW PRINCESS” take up most of the surface, a birthday gift from Lup two cycles ago. 

The moonlight outside is the only light source, and Magnus doesn’t have Taako’s elven eyes, but he can see clearly enough in the blued light: stacks upon stacks of books, most filled with arcane knowledge and magic secrets, all of them stuffed with bookmarks and scraps of paper to keep track of spells or lore or weird warlock names; half-burned candles on every flat surface, some of them perched in empty wine bottles, some in proper candlesticks, some just stuck to shelves with a drop of wax; a vanity packed with makeup and perfume, with scarves and jewelry, the whole thing coated with a fine layer of powder and glitter except the mirror which is so clean and so obsessively clear that it has to be under some constant spell; stars hanging from the ceiling made of innumerable materials: tin foil, wrapping paper, condom packets, scraps of Barry’s old jeans, leftover yarn and thread, torn journal paper with scribbled words made unreadable in the folds, typed pages of ruined, ancient tomes, even some ketchup packets.

Tiny altars contain constant magic, knotted strings and the smallest seashells and strange coins tuck into unexpected places and keep their secrets; beautiful watercolor paintings and careful charcoal drawings and quick sketches dot the walls, some of places Magnus doesn’t know or has never seen, some of people he’s never met, but some are of the seven of them, of their family, of Lup and Taako together, or just of Taako alone. Magnus finds himself drawn to one in particular, a pencil portrait of Taako snuggled up beneath a thick knit blanket, his eyes cat-tipped and sleepy, his lips pulled into the most contented smile as he stares out from the paper. Magnus wonders silently and not without a sharp twinge of something petty who drew it, if it was a lover from back home.

“Not a lot of places to sit, uh,” Taako says from behind him, motioning vaguely toward his bed in the small confines of the room. “I mean. Make yourself at home, Mags.”

Taako’s bed resembles nothing more than a luxuriant, well loved nest; unmade and sumptuous and inviting. Magnus stares down at it like it’s shimmering with divinity. He doesn’t deserve to be here, doesn’t deserve to disturb this space. He turns to Taako to stammer out something to that affect but he’s confronted with two hands on his chest and pushed back onto the bed, making the mattress squeak under his weight as he sinks down onto it.

He can only watch as Taako takes a seat beside him with his legs tucked beneath him, his body sinking down into a slouchy, sleepy comma as he blinks at Magnus, once and in slow motion.

Magnus only now notices the sleep mask pushed up into Taako’s white gold hair.

“Do you really sleep?” he can’t help but ask.

“Oh, for sure,” Taako says, a yawn starting halfway into the sentence. He doesn’t bother to cover it up. “Maybe I don’t have to for survival, but I do to stay all pretty and daisy fresh.”

Magnus shifts on the bed, wincing for the way it groans under him. He doesn’t say what he’s thinking, but the way Taako smiles tells him that it’s all over his face anyway. 

“Okay, it’s too late for dancing circles around whatever’s floating through our domes, darling. Night time’s truth time. Don’t make me go get Merle and get him to cast--”

“Fuck, please no,” Magnus groans, smiling for the inelegant snort Taako emits. “It’s… it’s just. I mean it’s nothing, really. Or not anything in particular anyway. Nothing I know how to put into, like. Words.”

Taako stares at him, blank and unimpressed. Magnus resists the urge to fidget.

“It’s just…” He runs a hand through the thick bramble of his hair, gripping the crown of it to anchor himself. He sighs, slumping back against the footboard. “I guess I’m just not very good at one on one. Like, not… not in any way.”

Taako’s eyebrows raise up close to his sleep mask.

“And you came to _me_? What do you think I am, Miss Congeniality?”

“I’m too rough,” Magnus forces out, lifting his head to meet Taako’s eyes. “I grew up with a bunch of boy cousins, you know? We punched each other to show affection. I just never learned to, like.”

He shrugs and tries for a smile.

“To handle anything worth having, I guess.”

Something happens to Taako’s face at that, some fascinating mix of surprise and softening. Magnus can feel how tenuous the moment is, how very easily Taako could break him apart with a single, careless word. Vulnerability isn’t an emotion Magnus attaches to himself, and it’s certainly not something he’s used to feeling in front of another person.

It only occurs to him then that he’s absolutely fucking terrified.

“C’mere,” Taako says, gentle, and he shifts his hips forward and leans back on his hands, the long arch of his body presented to Magnus, wholly touchable and within reach. The bruise darkens the delicate moonlight paleness of Taako’s skin, a cruel dash of deep purple that soaks into a blue-black center. Magnus feels his throat tighten all over again, closing up around a hundred apologies.

“Go ahead. Touch it.”

Magnus glances up into Taako’s eyes, searching them for a motivation. The quiet of the room is absolute.

His hand slides forward like he’s reaching for a prey animal, and he only touches Taako after he’s convinced his touch is as close to gentle as he knows how to be. His thumb fits perfectly into the bruise, covering it and hiding it from sight, but not erasing it. Taako’s breath hitches when he applies the smallest pressure, and Magnus lets go immediately, jerking his hand back and tucking it into his lap again.

“What if I like it?” Taako asks him, as close to unsure as Magnus has ever heard. His face is sleep soft but clear, a glint of challenge in his eyes. “Does that change anything?”

Heat slips up Magnus’s spine like liquid and spreads, pooling low in his belly and settling deep in his body. He aches with it.

“Tell me how you like to be touched on nights like this,” he says softly, keeping the words trapped between their bodies. He can’t stop looking from Taako’s face to his offered up body and back again, can’t keep the want out of his gaze. “When you’re soft like this and tired and you know someone wants to take care of you.”

“Do you want to take care of me?”

A useless question, completely unnecessary. The desperation Magnus feels right now is paralyzing. 

“Yes,” he whispers, leaning forward the slightest bit, his hands lifted but not touching again, not yet, only waiting for instructions.

“Put your hands on me. Gentle, like you don’t wanna wake me up. Or like I’m made of something that’ll tear.”

It hits Magnus then, his constant, internal struggle: the desire to tear into Taako like a wild thing warring against his fatalistic need to protect him, to keep him safe. And maybe there’s a place for both, a time for both. But tonight’s soft. And Magnus is learning how to be, too.

Taako’s tiny waist all but disappears under Magnus’s hands, impossibly soft skin spanned by wide, warm palms, ribs and spine framed by calloused fingers too wide and clumsy for such delicate work.

His thumbs stroke over the jut of Taako’s sternum, over the bottom rungs of his ribcage. He runs his hands down and finds the tiniest softness of his belly, the deep arch of his back. He rubs at either side of his navel and watches the give of flesh under his fingers, focused wholly on keeping his touches as tender as he’s ever managed.

Taako’s breathing deep now, his chest expanding and contracting with it. He’s so pliant in Magnus’s hands, his body ragdoll heavy and so trusting, letting Magnus hold most of his weight, letting Magnus hold him up. A glance up at his face and Magnus finds his eyes closed, his lashes absurdly long and dark where they fan out on the delicate skin beneath his eyes, his freckles pale beneath the heat spreading across his face. His mouth is pillowed and soft, silken like petals and parted just enough to see the white glint of his teeth, the secret movement of his tongue within.

Magnus feels heavy with how much he wants, with the things he needs from such a small body. It seems impossible to have it all without consuming Taako whole, without leaving him as a pile of licked clean bones.

It’s always been like this, just like this. But tonight’s the first time he’s ever admitted it to himself.

“Tell me what you want,” he whispers, inelegant and gravelly. His hands have found Taako’s hipbones, and he’s cupping them, fingers pressed to the rolled waist of his pajamas and skirting just barely beneath.

“The freckle under my eye. The left one. The one that--”

“I know which one,” Magnus cuts in, sounding a little too adoring for his own liking. He leans in closer in the near dark and finds the spot in question, the caramel colored shape that is a beauty mark, not a freckle, one in the perfect shape of a star. Taako told him once that he had four others on his body. Magnus has dreamt of mapping them out since.

“Kiss it. Soft. Don’t wake me up.”

Taako’s slight weight in his arms grows ever more lax, requiring Magnus to run his hands up his back to hold him upright. He fights the need to hold his breath because his heart is racing, and he ends up huffing irregular and loud the closer he gets to Taako’s face, his cheeks burning with how plainly he’s showing his nerves. Taako’s full mouth pulls into a tiny smile.

One of Magnus’s hands finds a way up his spine to cup the back of his head, cradling him as he closes in and lets his lips brush the starmark, dry and chaste and painfully innocent. His nose drags along Taako’s temple and across his hairline, tickled by errant strands of hair and smiling for it.

“Between my eyes.”

Taako’s hands are on his arms now, fingers curled into Magnus’s thick biceps, his thumbs rubbing circles over the curves of muscle he finds there. Magnus obeys and nuzzles to the center of his face, their noses sliding together too briefly before he tips his face up and kisses the smooth skin between his perfectly groomed eyebrows. Taako lets out a sound then, something like a sigh but it’s audible, punctuated with a noise almost too quiet to hear. He sucks in a quick breath immediately after, his slack body tensing in Magnus’s arms.

“Gentle,” Taako reminds him softly.

Realization hits in an instant, and Magnus hurries to fix it. He’s clutching at Taako now, gripping at him, pulling him in tight with an instinct that belongs in the woods, in the wild. He relaxes his hold on him but doesn’t let go, and it takes a level of concentration that he’s ashamed of to get back to the tenderness that existed between them only seconds before.

They start to speak at the same time, and Taako powers through, cutting off Magnus’s apology with his next objective.

“Jaw,” he murmurs.

“Which side?” Magnus tilts his head and aims for the right on instinct, and he doesn’t wait for a response before he’s kissing him there, right on the point of his jaw and only inches below his ear. He can feel the quickened drum of Taako’s heart against his chest.

“Kiss my neck.”

It’s almost a plea, almost a question. Taako’s hands have tightened in their grip on his arms, and they’re pressed in closer now, the warm pressure of one of Taako’s thighs sliding over Magnus’s legs. A blur of movement and then Magnus’s lap is full of gorgeous boy, the perfect weight and the perfect height because his throat is right there, bared for him. He sinks his fingers into the thick softness of Taako’s gathered hair and leans in, letting his lips part for the first time before they make contact with the softest skin he’s ever touched.

The tip of his tongue leads the kiss and Taako stirs in his lap, thighs spreading so he can move in closer, his hands sliding down between them to knot in Magnus’s ratty t-shirt, some old relic of a band from their home world whose music he can barely recall, and he’s all but clinging to Magnus as he covers the expanse of his throat with increasingly wetter kisses, ones that sound slick and sucking and that make their way down to Taako’s collarbone.

Just as Magnus goes for the hem of Taako’s shirt, Taako makes a soft, strangled sort of sound, his hands pulling harder at Magnus’s own shirt.

“My ears. Please. My ears next.”

_I shouldn’t be allowed_, is the thought that comes first, unbidden and true, but Magnus is savage in his wants, a selfish child still when he craves something so bad he can already taste it, so he doesn’t hesitate to kiss his way up the column of graceful neck to the lobe of Taako’s ear, encountering a myriad of piercings shot through with metal hoops and studs, most of them celestial in design, various stars and moons and nebular in color. He tongues along the soft line all the way up to the very tip that he takes between his lips and tries to kiss and suck all at once.

Taako quakes in his arms, his hands scurrying up under Magnus’s shirt and over the hairy span of his stomach and chest as he exhales in hot, damp breaths against Magnus’s cheek, the sound so close and intimate that he feels like he’s already inside of Taako somehow.

The pressure of his mouth slacks the tiniest bit and Taako shakes his head, careful not to disturb Magnus’s mouth.

“Keep going,” he tells him, shifting in his lap some more and making Magnus lean back against the footboard again, supporting both their weight. His tongue skirts along the shell of Taako’s ear from top to bottom, only stopping to kiss an earring that bumps cold against his mouth. Taako is practically panting by the time he gets back to the point of his ear, and the hard press of his cock against Magnus’s stomach is unmistakable. 

It’s damp between them by the time Taako pushes at his chest and Magnus releases the tip of his ear, the skin wet with spit and sucked red. Their eyes meet immediately, the heat between them almost unbearable.

“Did I--” Magnus starts.

“Eat me out,” Taako says.

He falls back against the bed and into a warm nest of pillows and blankets, his thighs still spread around Magnus’s body, his shirt riding up so high that Magnus can see his nipples, pink and shiver hard on his flat chest. Magnus just stares at him, this delicacy inexplicably being offered up to him, and Taako rolls his eyes and lifts a foot to push it against Magnus’s chest, drawing him out of his sexual crisis and back here, back to him.

“Hey,” Taako says with a snap of his fingers, his toes wiggling beneath a thick wool sock against his chest. “Stay with me, big guy. You got me all hot and bothered now.”

“I…” Magnus starts, his eyes wide and unblinking, caught on Taako’s belly button of all things, on the tiny glint of crystal pierced there, and all he can think is _I could kiss him there, if I wanted. I could fit my tongue in there and he would let me._

“What, you never seen a naked girl before? C’mon, help me with those big hands of yours.”

Taako’s smile is gentle, teasing, and Magnus is helpless to do anything but obey him, but let Taako guide him to the rolled up waist of his oversized pajama pants that he tugs on, pulling them off so easy that he’s almost startled by it. Panties beneath, tiny and boycut and turquoise lace, and the hard lump of his cock in them is just icing on the cake. Taako’s socks extend all the way up to just below his knees, a fact Magnus learns as soon as the pants hit the floor. They’re a deep teal that make his legs look even longer, even paler, and Magnus’s hands are so big and so dark when they find their way to Taako’s knees and spread his legs apart.

“Do you need tips on getting me all the way naked? I can definitely--”

Magnus runs his hands beneath Taako’s legs and catches him behind the knees and pushes, tipping his body back so that his ass is lifted off the mattress. He impatiently kicks at the covers behind him, clearing the bed enough so he can sprawl out on his stomach, half hanging off the bed to do so, but it gets him right where he wants to be.

Taako gasps, shocky and broken, when Magnus’s open mouth descends on his pretty cock trapped beneath stretchy lace and closes around it, sucking at the length of it laying against his hip and tasting the slick he’s dripping out like a leaky faucet. He mouths at him through his panties, tasting the throb of his cock and opening wider so he can tongue his tight balls at the same time.

Taako’s got his arms wrapped around his own legs and his face buried against his knees, and Magnus can feel the arch of his delicate feet against the top of his head when he slides a hand down and rubs a thumb over the space between Taako’s soft but pert little cheeks, pushing in until he comes into contact with skin.

“Ohhhh,” Taako groans, the sound muffled by his knees, but his thighs are quivering as he shakes, trying to push down into the touch. His asshole pulses against Magnus’s thumb like a heartbeat, drawing in and pushing out so that he can feel the tight furl of it beneath the dry lace. He starts to rub him out as he suckles at his cock, and his throat burns with the nasty, animal sounds he only now realizes he’s making. 

He fumbles with the waist of Taako’s panties, distracted by the kisses he can’t stop leaving on his still clothed skin as he does. Taako pushes his hands away impatiently, shoving at the underwear himself until it’s around his thighs and he’s fighting to kick them off, something he only accomplishes with Magnus’s help, in the end.

“F-F-Fuckin’ eat my pussy,” Taako shivers out, his hands pushing into Magnus’s hair and pulling hard, all lessons of gentle tendencies forgotten. Magnus thumbs his cheeks apart and stares between them at the smallest, prettiest hole he’s ever seen, pink as a rose and ready to be devoured.

He glances up and finds Taako’s eyes on him, a gorgeous combination of submission and bratty entitlement catching his gaze and holding it as he leans in and lets the very tip of his tongue make contact, teasing at the snug, dry wrinkles just to feel Taako shake.

He feels immediately involved in something sacred, like some ritual has begun between his mouth and Taako’s body. The wet inner workings of his mouth are loud and intimate as he starts to lick him out, his tongue lapping and prodding and massaging at Taako’s hole, and it takes an unbelievable amount of effort before he feels even the slightest give in him. He pries his pink cunt open with wide thumbs and licks in deeper, his jaw popping and aching as he works and works at him, earning every millimeter he’s being allowed to sink inside of him.

Taako’s writhing on the bed now, his legs dropped and thrown open wide, his hand working hard between his legs as he jacks his cock and grinds down against Magnus’s tongue, riding his face with zero hesitation, without a shred of self-consciousness. Magnus fucks into his asshole with his tireless, slippery tongue and lets Taako use his mouth and doesn’t take his fucking eyes off of the body arching and trembling above him, doesn’t miss how red Taako’s face is and how his eyes are damp with tears and how he’s sucking on his bottom lip like it’s a cock and the way his hair is fallen out of its messy ponytail and tangling everywhere. 

Maybe this isn’t gentle, but it’s absolutely full-on worship.

“Gonna make me come don’t stop don’t you dare stop--” Taako tightens the hand clutching at Magnus’s long, dark hair and yanks him in harder, smashing Magnus’s nose into the sweet bulge of his perineum and holding him there as his hand flies inside his panties and his asshole starts to flutter around Magnus’s tongue and it’s contracting so powerfully and so suddenly that he’s almost forced out but he doubles down, grabs Taako’s thighs and hauls him onto his face and holds on.

Taako rides his face through his orgasm, grinding on his tongue and letting out a stunned little yelp when Magnus forces his tongue even deeper as his hole relaxes, and he licks him out through the trembles that follow and seem to go on and on and on. He collapses down on the bed in a heap of long limbs and a mess of shimmery white hair, an arm flung over his face as he breathes hard and shudders every few seconds and tries to come down. Magnus keeps working at him, sucking at his softened hole and massaging into it with his tongue, drawing out a long, aching whine from Taako that makes him smile even as he eats him out.

“Even elves with cocks can’t have multiple orgasms, babe,” he sighs from above, pulling at Magnus’s hair to try and get him to stop. Magnus can feel the conflict in him, in his body movements, can feel very clearly the way Taako rocks against his mouth and isn’t making the slightest attempt to pull away. Magnus pulls back to pant with dripping, parted lips, his eyes uncrossing so he can focus on his work, on the progress he’s made with Taako’s hole. It’s swollen and contracting and a delicious shade of red, and he only realizes that he’s touching it with his fingers when Taako gasps, his entire body jerking instantly.

“Shit,” Taako breathes, the sweet cunt beneath Magnus’s rubbing fingers pulsing, silently begging. “Haven’t, ah. Haven’t really been open for shop the last decade or so, I guess. Not used to…”

He trails off and Magnus glances up to see Taako look endearingly bashful, his long arms flung up over his head and wrapped back beneath his pillow. He already looks debauched, and Magnus is still fully dressed. 

“Kinda torn about that,” Magnus admits, turning his attention back to Taako’s ass and licking his lips as his thumb rubs in a tight circle over it. “It’s a fucking crime that you haven’t been touched in such a long time, but the thought of anybody…”

It’s his turn to lose his words, and the heat that creeps up his neck to his cheeks is fury borne of pure jealousy. Taako’s belly trembles visibly and he spreads his thighs a little more, offered up to Magnus like a sacrifice. A silence shrouds them and Magnus can feel the want in Taako’s body, can feel the way he opens for him and tries to pull his thumb inside the soft, wrecked bloom Magnus can still taste on his tongue. 

Maybe it’s a little fucked up, but the violent jealousy coursing through him makes him even harder.

“Lookin’ at me like you own me,” Taako murmurs, one of his hands sliding down to touch Magnus’s cheek, fingers scritching at one of his thick sideburns like he’s a lazy dog. One of Taako’s legs is draped over Magnus’s shoulder, a bony knee visible out of the corner of his eye just above a fuzzy sock. “If I could get wet, I’d be dripping for that fuckin’ look alone.”

Just the mention of Taako being wet, the vaguest reminder of the sweetness Magnus has been trying to lick out for the better part of an hour now, and his mouth floods with saliva. His gaze drops back down to Taako’s hole, both thumbs plucking at it now, tugging it apart to get to the deeper, more secret pink parts within.

He closes in on him again without thinking about it, shoving his face in deep and forcing his tongue inside and moving with Taako when he arches up off the bed, legs locking behind Magnus’s head.

“Shit, Mags. _Fuck_,” Taako sobs, too loud for this time of night, and they’re both way too far gone to worry about silencing spells or anybody’s sleep. Magnus groans, scraping deep down in his chest for the lowest timbres of sound. It’s sloppy and loud when he sucks on Taako’s hole, getting enough softened flesh of it in his mouth to nurse at it, his tongue lashing deep with forceful flicks. 

Magnus is so hard that it feels like his heart has moved down his body and stopped between his legs, every ounce of his blood coursing right down to his cock. He knows he’s going to come the second he gets inside of Taako if he doesn’t calm the fuck down first.

“Slow,” Taako gasps, his body so tensed and so tiny in Magnus’s grip. It’s the only word he can manage for a few beats, and it’s so quiet that Magnus barely registers it. He grabs Magnus’s sideburns in his hands and yanks on them like a horse’s reins, a breathless laugh bubbling up out of him as he tries to catch his breath. Magnus finally looks up at him, sure that he looks starved and crazed and dangerous, but Taako’s face is serene, his features soft under the sweat and rosy cheeks.

“Gentle, babe. Remember? Gentle.”

Magnus relaxes immediately as he feels Taako’s fingers stroke through his hair and the words sink in. His tongue slips a little deeper as Taako melts beneath him, and their eyes lock as he licks him out, keeping his rhythm matched up with the rock of Taako’s little hips and the steadying stroke of long fingers in Magnus’s wild hair. 

“That’s it,” Taako whispers, the words slurring as his eyes nearly fall closed. “God, that’s it, Mags.”

Taako tastes like heaven. Like every force of nature and every sweet flower and every drop of nectar on every plane. He tastes raw, like blood and bruises and kisses that defy spoken language. 

He comes on Magnus’s tongue again but it’s bone deep this time, it’s silent and with a violent shake that makes the bed whine, his cock untouched as it dribbles out cream on his jumping belly, but Taako’s fingers are pushed up hard against his own taint, rubbing himself out in time with Magnus’s licks.

“Get inside me right now,” he breathes, his eyes closed as hard shivers still make his body jolt in Magnus’s grip. “Now.”

Magnus’s cock throbs like a punch against the mattress. He squeezes his thighs together to ease some of the ache from his balls.

His jaw is tired and his tongue is numb from overuse, and he can’t stop licking his lips as he tries to clear his mind and focus on what he needs to do next. He looks around the room desperately, searching for a bottle or a tube or a fucking magic pill that’ll slick up his fingers so he can--

“No,” Taako says, interrupting his thoughts and pulling on Magnus by his sideburns once again. “Hey. Look at me, big guy.”

Magnus snaps to attention, moving up Taako’s body because that’s where he’s being pulled. His dark eyes lock with ones that seem to shimmer even in this ordinary room on this ordinary ship, and he wonders how many moons he’s going to see glittering in Taako’s eyes before this is all over.

Taako’s stern expression melts into a shaky smile when Magnus finally focuses on him.

“There you are. Forget about my bomb-ass pussy in your mouth for like a minute, arrite?”

“Oh, _god_,” Magnus huffs, his right hand snaking down Taako’s body and seeking out exactly that with greedy fingers.

“No fingers,” Taako starts, shoving Magnus’s hand away and gripping his wrist, but he doesn’t quite manage to span the width of it with his little hand. Magnus grins as Taako squirms beneath him in feigned annoyance. 

“No ,” he corrects, grinning when Magnus snorts. “No lube. No prep. Just… get in me.”

Magnus has no fucking clue how it happened, but his clothes are off and in a mysterious pile on the floor before he even registers the feel of cool air against his bare skin. Taako’s hands are on his chest, nails dragging gently through the dark hair spanning his pecs and traveling down to his thick, solid belly.

“God, you’re so little,” Magnus whispers, so much more dangerous now that his cock is out, now that it’s pressed against Taako’s body, feeling the barest hint of his licked-out hole against the fat head. Taako is barely visible beneath him, is made helpless under his bulk. Magnus has never seen him look so blissful.

One of those small hands wraps around his cock, and Magnus’s brain short circuits.

“You’re not,” Taako says soft against his ear.

Magnus’s arms quake from holding himself up, his thighs spreading between Taako’s legs so he can fuck down into his grip. Taako rubs the head of Magnus’s cock against his hole, the sound watery, slippery with lube that seems to be dripping out of Taako like--

Magnus grins.

“Magic,” he says, pressing a kiss to the tip of Taako’s nose.

He groans as Taako teases him, tortures them both, not doing much for a long moment but rubbing Magnus’s dick against himself, small hips lifting up to get at it better. Magnus just lets him, lets his cock be used however Taako wants him, restrained strength making his whole body tremble.

“Fuck me open,” Taako says on a sigh against his skin when he finally stops, letting the tip of Magnus’s cock catch on his dripping, softened asshole. “I’m still really tight inside, so go easy on me, okay?”

“Anything you want,” Magnus promises, an unexpected punch of sound forced from him when he feels Taako’s hand drift from his cock back to his balls that he rubs with the expertise of a very fevered dream.

Taako lifts his hips, and Magnus loosens the reins on his body just enough to press up and in, breaking through the first tight grip of muscle with the thick knot of his cockhead. Taako gasps hotly against his ear, his legs tightening around Magnus’s hips so that he’s all but hanging from his body, everything but his shoulders lifted off the mattress.

“Don’t go any deeper,” Taako instructs him, the words trembling, already breathless. “Fuck. Just let me…”

Taako takes some deep breaths and Magnus kisses along his burning neck, lifting his long, sweaty hair from beneath him and draping it over the pillow and off the bed. He blows cool air against Taako’s skin and feels him clench up for it around the head of his cock.

“Loosen me up there first. Pull all the way out and go back in, but shallow. Okay?”

Taako’s arms are hugged up around his neck when Magnus pulls all the way out again, the very tip of his cock juicy wet as it’s kissed by the hot mouth of Taako’s hole. He digs back in until he feels the tight snap of the first ring of muscle close up behind the head, strangle tight even still. Taako whimpers, a sound so soft that Magnus knows he’s not supposed to hear it. 

“God, you’re so beautiful,” he tells Taako, his vision swimming, mouth restless as it feathers kisses over his skin blindly.

“Again,” Taako breathes.

Magnus looks down as he pulls out again, catching sight of his own cock as it unearths itself from Taako’s body, and he’s momentarily mortified by how enormous it looks, by how angry red and animalistic as it’s poised right at Taako’s hole, ready to force its way back in against all logic, ready to force Taako to accommodate him. To make room for him where it seems like there simply is none.

It takes all of his restraint not to shove in until his balls slap against Taako’s tailbone.

They work together for several long, drawn out moments, the agony of not going deeper only making it that much better, making every single centimeter hard won and savored. Only the first few inches of his cock are wet, soaked with the lube Taako magicked into his body, and he’s sucking on Taako’s bottom lip when Taako speaks again, his voice ragged.

“A little deeper,” he requests, still clutching choke tight around the fat knob of Magnus’s honestly impressive cock. He hisses when Magnus obeys immediately, his head thrown back on the pillows, body arching up hard off the bed even as he grips Magnus’s biceps and tries to push him away.

The rest of his body is gripping Magnus tight, pleading with him to stay right where he is.

“Fuck, I don’t know if--”

“You’re too little for this,” Magnus says again, deliriously blissful and happy right where he is for the moment, half of his cock held inside the soft heat of Taako’s body while the rest waits its turn. Taako moans for Magnus’s words, shivers for them, sharp little teeth nipping at his throat as they clutch at each other and Magnus tries to school his smile into something less open.

“You’re just built like a fucking bull, ‘s not my fault,” Taako gripes, punching ineffectually at Magnus’s ribs and earning a grunt from him.

“That was not a complaint.”

“I don’t think elf bodies were designed with human cocks in mind.” Taako’s nails are long and filed into tamed claws, kitty that he is, and the slow drag of them up and down Magnus’s back combined with the impossible intimacy of being inside of him makes Magnus’s chest tighten, makes his belly swoop hard. He cups a big hand at the top of Taako’s head and strokes back, cradling him and keeping him safe as he continues to move in him, opening him up with a thoroughness that borders on devotion.

“There’s nothing about your body that wasn’t designed with me in mind,” Magnus murmurs against his ear, and the absence of space between them means that he hears the hitch in Taako’s breath at that, feels the pulse of his inner muscles contracting.

“Jesus, Magnus,” he gasps, so soft that he sounds hurt, but the heat emanating from him is unmistakable, the way he relaxes that last little bit allows Magnus to sink even deeper, nearly buried to the root. A sob pierces the thick night air in the darkened room, and there isn’t a part of Taako that isn’t wrapped around Magnus now, not a single inch of his body that isn’t enveloping him, holding him. Magnus moves completely without permission, without realizing, following a baser instinct that doesn’t require words, doesn’t need anything from either of them but this: an intense, primal rut while their hearts fight against bone and skin and cartilage to find each other.

The ship seems to be shifting under the push and pull of their weight, seems to be reacting somehow to their movements, to even the secret kisses Magnus leaves in Taako’s sweaty hair and in the fragrant dampness of his neck. A low, vibrational hum settles over the craft like an intangible layer, but neither of them notice for a second.

Taako stretches out his long legs and hooks them over Magnus’s shoulders, sighing in aching relief when Magnus bears down on him, folds him in half, knocking his knees back to dig into the mattress above his own shoulders.

Maybe it’s just coincidence, but their eyes are locked on each other in the devastating moment when Magnus fits the rest of himself into Taako’s snug body, drawn up deep and irretrievable, kept. 

Coincidence or not, Taako looks bared to the bone beneath him, tears shimmering in the dark in his bright eyes, nails drawing ten clean slices of blood along his shoulderblades.

The gasp that leaves him comes out as a hitching sob.

Magnus’s eyes slip closed without his consent, but it’s all he can do in the face of this, as an attempt to feel Taako completely. He feels consumed, locked away somewhere safe and warm, some strange kind of return trip to a home he didn’t think existed anymore. Never knew he would find in a person, inside the body of the most beautiful creature on any planet.

He returns to himself in sluggish degrees, aware of the strangling band of heat around the base of his cock and the sweet press of lips all over his face that curve into a soft smile when Magnus has the mind to start kissing back.

“There you are,” Taako murmurs, hands restless and petting him all over now, along his arms and his neck and up into the mess of his thick, auburn hair. “Had to burn a spell slot to keep you from coming too fast.”

Magnus snorts, and he feels Taako’s slick teeth as that grinning mouth nips along his jaw, his chin. 

“Wasn’t expecting…” Magnus starts, but his throat clamps down on any words that try to follow, his eyes shiny and burning as he gazes helplessly down at Taako, fully aware that he’s being seen clearly with elven eyes that don’t miss anything, no matter how dark. 

“Fuck me, big boy.” The words don’t match the breathy, shivering tone of Taako’s voice, the way his hands clutch again at Magnus’s biceps. “I’m all yours.”

Magnus is still young, at the end of the day. He’s still learning. Still learning his own strength, the power in his muscles and his endless determination, still feeling out all the tucks and corners of his heart. The emotion that has taken up residence inside his chest feels like a physical weight, feels like something permanent, and he knows it’s nothing he’s ever felt before. 

He’s been right here, sunk deep inside of a good number of people. But none of them held him so close.

It’s jarring, how hard he lets his weight drop on Taako, lets his hipbones impact with the backs of Taako’s soft thighs with a damp slap each time. And maybe it’s a spell, or just Taako’s inherent magic, but Magnus swears there’s some sorcery being worked on his cock, that the euphoria building inside of him is some obscure cantrip of sex magic Taako learned back on the stardust planet in cycle seven. 

Whatever it is, it’s making Magnus crazy. Drawing out loud, earnest gasps and choked groans as his dick is taken care of to a humiliating degree.

“Shit,” he gasps as Taako mouths at his cheek, kissing at a furry sideburn, his slight body rocking beneath Magnus’s own, pushing up into each thrust and fucking himself on Magnus’s cock when he’s not getting it fast enough for his apparent liking. Magnus blinks sweat and stars out of his eyes and tries to focus, to concentrate on the feel of a soft pillow and Taako’s quicksilver hair in his clutching hands, on the way his knees and socked feet are digging into the mattress, trying to get as much traction as possible as he rocks into Taako’s body. But every sense and ounce of focus narrows on secret parts, on places he can’t ever see, ones that he’ll only be able to feel and that he’s determined to memorize like the streets of his old neighborhood back home. 

There’s some delicious place inside of Taako, when Magnus angles his hips just right, that squeezes just behind the head of his cock so good it makes his balls tingle.

Taako is beautiful like this, being absolutely destroyed on good dick, he’s wanton and sex kitten-lazy, his body folded up like the origami stars suspended above them, but his hands are gentle on Magnus’s shoulders, his eyes half-lidded and knowing, the smile on his face so sweetly indulgent as Magnus ruts into him like a hungry dog. His face is flushed and his hair is stuck to his rosy little mouth, and every goddamn sound that leaves him is Magnus’s new favorite song.

Magnus drifts in and out of startling awareness of the room around them, drops back into real life to find that he’s crowded Taako up against the headboard and he’s pummeling him there, his massive hands gripped tight around the curved wooden top so that his knuckles are being smashed against the wall every time he fucks up into Taako, but, hey, fuck it. Taako is spread-legged around him now, the luxurious softness of his socks rubbing at Magnus’s flanks, and his arms are wrapped around Magnus’s body like he’s a life preserver, like Taako’s trying to stay above water.

The dampness Magnus feels against his neck pulls him back another time from his astral travel into Taako’s body, and he ducks his head to nuzzle at Taako’s face, to nose at him and draw his sweet face up to his own. They kiss, and Magnus can taste Taako’s tears, can taste the sob caught in his hot little mouth, and they strain against each other again, pushing hard and grinding to work Magnus around deep inside of Taako’s needy body.

He pushes Taako’s hair back from his face, tucking wild strands of it behind his tipped ears, and the steady thrum of orgasm spreads through Magnus as he digs into Taako and doesn’t dampen his desperate sob as he pulses, scalding and thick and ruinous, inside of Taako.

Taako is trembling when Magnus regains feeling in his fingertips and his vision clears again. He’s burning to the touch and whispering against Magnus’s cheek, strange words that sound like incantations, slurred and in Elvish and they’re all lost to Magnus. He’s strung up tight, quivering and suspended.

“M-M-Magnus,” he finally whispers, hushed, desperate.

“I’ve got you,” Magnus says in between kisses to Taako’s mouth, blurring the words against lush, lax lips. “Here, sweetheart. Here I am. I’ve got you.”

Taako is full to bursting as it is, so Magnus doesn’t need to lick his fingers before he reaches between them and tucks three of them cleanly up into Taako’s body alongside his still throbbing cock. The come he’s fed into Taako makes it an easy invasion, announces it with a thick, sloppy suck.

Taako cries out, his back arching hard against the headboard, pushing his tiny chest against Magnus’s ridiculously stacked one. Taako’s dick is a bright, red hot line of heat between them, rubbing back and forth in the trail of slick it’s left in its wake. 

His prostate is swollen and oversensitive to the point of apparent tears, because a fresh fall of them tumble down Taako’s cheeks when Magnus rubs right over it with the pads of his thick fingers. His wrist aches, and the angle is absolute shit, but Taako is about to fall apart all around his cock, and nothing in any known world could deter him from his task right now.

Taako’s cock jumps against Magnus’s belly, and Magnus stops suckling at the tip of Taako’s tongue just long enough to speak.

“Do you want me to--”

A hard shake of Taako’s head sends a tumble of pale hair around his face again, and he’s clutching so hard at Magnus’s shoulders that Magnus is almost afraid Taako’s going to break a nail.

“K-Keep fucking me. Like that. _J-Just_ like that.” Taako lifts his hips and shoves down on Magnus’s cock and his curled, frantic fingers, his hole pulsing and contracting in flutters as he starts to come again, working himself on Magnus until it’s a frenzy that neither of them can control and Taako is screaming, shattering the night silence and latching onto something primal in Magnus.

Magnus keeps his hand shoved up hard inside of him, his teeth gritted, trapping a long, continuous growl in his raw throat. Taako collapses like a broken doll, spilling all around Magnus and panting in ragged, wet gasps.

He removes himself from Taako’s ruined insides as gently as possible, and he holds Taako against him to arrange them on the bed in a way that will hopefully be comfortable for Taako when he finally comes back into himself. His ears are ringing with the insane amount of noise they’d just made, and he feels a little silly trying to be quiet as they creak and shift on the bed to get comfortable.

Taako shivers in his sprawl on top of Magnus’s barrel chest, and Magnus comes down in his own time, too; one hand stroking down Taako’s back while the other cradles the back of his head. The night feels watchful now, like maybe they’d woken up more than one person with their spontaneous fuck party. 

He can already hear the inevitable comments from Lup in the morning.

They still eventually, and the light outside Taako’s window is paler, growing lavender, like they’d somehow taken all night to do that.

“Seems like years since I was anywhere else,” Magnus says softly into the dark, the last sentence in a blurry stream of silent conversation from his own mind, but Taako hums in understanding. 

“That wasn’t very gentle, papa bear.” Taako finally lifts his head and gazes up at Magnus in the last bits of pink moonlight left, his lashes long and heavy, his mouth pulled into a tired smile. “But you just took me apart like you were the one who built me, so.”

Magnus grins, can’t help it, and if he had a free hand, he’d preen a little.

There are new marks on Taako’s delicate body, red splotches and lines in the shapes of Magnus’s hands and mouth and hipbones, future bruises that they’ll explore later on. But Taako looks well fucked and satisfied, so Magnus doesn’t apologize. He draws Taako up closer, holding Taako’s chin still with careful fingers so he can search his eyes. So he sees absolutely nothing else.

“Next time?” he asks.

Taako smiles, his lips soft, asking nicely to be kissed.

“Mm. Yes. You can be gentle with me in the morning.”


End file.
